Faced with declining state funding, CSU is raising money to build a $246 million, 40,000-seat football stadium on its Fort Collins campus. University President Tony Frank says the new facility will help build a winning football team while advancing one of the school's highest priorities: attracting more out-of-state students paying higher tuition.

Skeptics, including some alumni and faculty, see the project as a boondoggle—especially for a team that plays in a relatively low-profile athletic conference and doesn't sell out its current 32,500-seat stadium off campus. The debate has sparked dueling websites, animated letters to the editor and arguments about the role of sports at a university.

ENLARGE

Colorado State University's Hughes Stadium is nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
Benjamin Rasmussen for the Wall

Battle of the Bleachers

See some college stadiums and how much they cost to build.

Shown, Husky Stadium Elaine Thompson/Associated Press

Building a Stadium to Boost a School

See players practice. Benjamin Rasmussen for the Wall Street Journal

ENLARGE

"I am just an ordinary retired citizen who looks at this from a financial standpoint and says, 'This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen,'" said Bob Vangermeersch, a former Fort Collins businessman who is leading the opposition movement against the new stadium. "The numbers just do not pan out."

Colorado has cut its support for public colleges by 73% since 1980, more than any other state, according to Tom Mortenson of the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education. If the current trend holds, Dr. Frank has warned that within a decade, CSU—which currently gets 10% of its budget from the state—could become one of the nation's first public universities to lose state funding.

He and other stadium backers believe a new facility would attract better football players, helping the Colorado State Rams win more games and make more television appearances, thus raising the university's profile. This exposure, they believe, would spur more applications from nonresident students, who pay $23,347 in annual tuition, three times what Colorado students pay. Dr. Frank aims to add 5,000 nonresident students, and says an upgraded football program would help.

"I think we're in a have-to situation," said Doug Markley, a car dealer and CSU football booster who is contemplating a seven-figure donation to the stadium project. "Either you're going to be an 'is' or a 'has-been.'"

Opponents say there are no guarantees that a spiffy new football venue will bring in significantly more revenue, and that the additional debt to build it could hamstring CSU for years. To secure the project, the school said it must raise half the stadium's cost, $125 million, in private donations and pledges by October 2014. It will sell bonds to cover the rest. University officials have declined to say how much has been raised so far.

The stadium issue has "really torn our community apart," said Anita Wright, CSU's former budget director and a stadium opponent. "You almost don't want to bring up the issue. It's like talking religion or politics." Ms. Wright said that shortly after she wrote an opinion piece opposing the project for a local newspaper, she found a bolt in one of her car tires. Other stadium opponents have had signs stolen from their lawns, she said.

Colorado State isn't alone in eyeing the economic benefits of football. A more than decadelong boom at university athletic departments nationwide has produced gleaming weight rooms and stadiums bulging with luxury suites.

CSU officials point to the University of Oregon, which has made massive investments in athletic facilities over the last 15 years, thanks in part to the largess of Nike co-founder and Oregon alumnus Phil Knight. The investments coincided with a period of dominance by the football team, ranked as high as No. 2 in the nation last year. The University of Oregon doubled its number of nonresident students between 2002 and 2012 to nearly 42% of the undergraduate population.

Colorado State and Oregon are largely similar institutions, Dr. Frank, CSU's president, said. "In fact, in places—research funding and things—we do far better," he said. "Yet, I bet if you asked 100 people outside the state of Oregon and the state of Colorado which is the better academic institution, probably 90 to 95% would say the University of Oregon. And what I would argue to you is that that would be based largely on perception and the visibility from athletics."

Colorado State attracted $318 million in federal and state operating grants and contracts compared with $90 million at the University of Oregon, according to 2010-11 data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

Oregon President Michael Gottfredson said, "While we're justifiably proud of our recent successes in athletics, the University of Oregon has been well known for our academic strengths for decades."

In the past six years, Colorado State has spent $690 million on new or updated facilities to make itself more attractive to students. It completed a $32 million renovation to its recreation center that included an indoor climbing wall and smoothie bar, and it is building dormitories with such amenities as private bathrooms and a fireside lounge. Still, CSU's nonresident students remained flat at 19% of the school's undergraduate population between 2003 and 2012.

Two years ago, Dr. Frank decided that CSU football should aspire to the same heights as academic programs such as its veterinary medicine program, ranked No. 3 nationally by U.S. News & World Report.

He hired Jack Graham, a former Colorado State quarterback who had worked for years in the catastrophic-events insurance business, as athletic director. Mr. Graham pitched the idea of an on-campus stadium as a way to draw alumni back to campus and help differentiate for out-of-state students Colorado State from the University of Colorado at Boulder. People he meets while traveling often mistakenly call him a Buffalo—CU's mascot—Mr. Graham said, adding that Colorado is better known in part because it won a football national title in 1990.

Dr. Frank, a scientist in pathology and toxicology by training, said part of him remains skeptical that a new stadium can translate directly into an enrollment boom. But he noted that the two highest-traffic days on the university's website last year coincided with Colorado State's appearance in the NCAA men's basketball tournament. He concluded that building a new football stadium made more sense than upgrading the current one, which has $30 million in deferred-maintenance bills, and the CSU system board of governors backed him a year ago.

No academic research exists to support the notion that a new stadium helps a college football team win, experts say. Nor will it necessarily attract more fans. The universities of Akron and Minnesota both moved from off-campus to new on-campus stadiums in 2009. Both saw initial attendance bumps before attendance dropped below pre-new-stadium levels.

Both teams have worse records since the stadium opened, though Minnesota is 4-0 this season. Akron's athletic department is generating less from annual ticket sales and other direct sources than its $2.2 million in annual debt service on the $65 million stadium.

The shortfall forced cost-cutting in a department already subsidized by university and student funds. Representatives from both schools said poor team performance contributed to attendance drops but they believe their current coaches can improve their teams and draw fans back.

Colorado State has a built-in financial handicap: It belongs to the Mountain West Conference. In 2012-2013, Mountain West distributed an average of $2.3 million in broadcast-rights revenue to each school, while the Southeastern Conference—which has produced the past seven football national champions—distributed $20.7 million.

Mr. Markley, the CSU football booster, said he believes that eventually the neighboring Big 12 or Pac-12 Conferences—whose schools also command more than $20 million annually in TV-rights deals—will expand. The stadium will help make Colorado State an attractive addition when they do, he said. A Pac-12 spokesman said the conference has no plans to expand, and Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said he anticipates "an extended period of conference stability nationwide."

Another issue is the CSU football team. The Rams have been ranked as one of the nation's top 25 teams in just eight of the past 78 seasons and played in 12 postseason bowl games in more than a century of organized football. Mr. Graham, the athletic director, said he believes the Rams can regularly appear in both the top 25 and prestigious bowl games. The team is 1-3 this season after going 4-8 last year. It plays the University of Texas at El Paso in Fort Collins on Saturday.

Colorado State's long road was evident last Saturday when it traveled to Tuscaloosa, Ala., to play two-time defending national champion Alabama, a member of the Southeastern Conference. Alabama routed CSU 31-6 after building up a 17-point halftime lead. The teams both compete in college football's 125-team top division. But while the No. 1-ranked Tide regularly sells out its 101,821-seat stadium and generated $82 million in revenue in 2012, Colorado State's announced attendance sank to an average of 19,250 last season—including 9,304 per game in actual paying customers—and the football program generated $4.1 million.

Much of the argument for Colorado State's stadium centers on the idea of creating more excitement among alumni and generating more donations. The current stadium is located 3.6 miles away from the university, whereas the new stadium is planned inside the campus's southern edge. Mr. Graham said that although he had attended dozens of football games since his 1975 graduation he hadn't been back to campus until he took the job as athletic director. "We don't come back to listen to a professor give a lecture on economics or on business management—not in the numbers that we come back to see a football game," he said.

Even if sports success fosters more donations, there is no guarantee some will spill over into academic causes. In a 2004 study of the University of Oregon, researchers Jeffrey Stinson and Dennis Howard found that significant increases in private donations to athletics were associated with decreases in giving to academics. A 2007 study by researchers Brad Humphreys and Michael Mondello that examined nationwide data over 20 years concluded that when athletic success spurred increases in private donations, the increases usually lasted only as long as the success, and tended to be concentrated in athletics.

CSU is facing a lot of skepticism about the stadium project on its own campus. "I would say that the majority of the faculty on this campus are clearly against it," said Tim Gallagher, a CSU finance professor who chairs the faculty council and said he personally has no strong opinion on the project. "Some of it comes from a feeling that athletics as a general rule is getting too big and is starting to overshadow the primary academic mission of the university."

Backers are undaunted.

Mr. Graham said the Rams can compete on a $50 million budget—about half of what athletic departments at many college football powerhouses spend. And he said the new stadium would be a "talent magnet." The school's second-year football coach, Jim McElwain, said the new stadium helped lure him away from Alabama, where he was offensive coordinator. He said the stadium would help him recruit players as well. "Why does a car dealership build a brand-new showroom?" he said. "You bring a client in, you want to show excellence."

Corrections & Amplifications A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the Alabama football stadium's seating capacity as 84,000. The stadium seats 101,821.

I have had two students at CSU. They have some world-class departments like Agriculture, Veterinary medicine. I also see a very good Mechanical engineering department. Football is a sacred cow in America, but has questionable benefit to the men who play it and to the rest of the student body. Big concerns have been raised about long lasting head injuries for example, that provide the opposite effect of what we're trying to accomplish with a good education.

Now consider the crazy math. It takes 31,500 extra out of state student-semesters (assuming mostly fixed costs) over time to pay back the 250000000$. Instead, if you had this money, and you put it in the stock market at 8%, you could get 20M$ per year, which would fund some very nice research and teaching programs.

The investors that buy the stadium construction bonds, are going to get exactly what they deserve as a return on monies, which is LESS than par..... A fools game at best.

Higher Ed is in the beginning of a radical change in how education is delivered to the masses. Tenure is going away. In-resident schooling is going away. High-priced Liberal Arts programs are going away...... ... And some fools think business as usual in collegiate sports is going to stay.

The problem I have is that none of the detractors have a compelling alternative plan.

Yes, CSU's new stadium is a gamble. You're hoping it will do a lot of things that there is no guarantee of: 1) increase appeal to out of state students, 2) increase alumni interest in development, 3) lead to a more competitive football team that will generate more revenue and increase national visibility, 4) make CSU more attractive if BCS football ever moves to 4 superconferences, etc

None of that is certain. But at least Frank, Graham & Co have a logical, cohesive plan that recognizes the fiscal challenges CSU is facing and offers a potential solution. As a detractor, you can't just say "invest in academics" and think you have created a strategic solution. Invest what? The starting point for the discussion is the recognition of declining revenues. You first have to do something to generate the revenue that you hopefully will one day get to reinvest in non-football related activities. There is no other large scope plan to increase applications from outside of Colorado.

Over time eliminate all government forms of funding to secondary education. Let the schools operate at whatever level the market might bear. Costs would be reduced and those attending would be there to be educated ina productive disipline. Those wishing to learn how to drink beer and party hard would have to form there on educational network. Neither would burden the taxpayer and parents would be richer.

Borrow a quarter of a billion dollars as a bet that if you build it, they will come? I think someone's brother-in-law is in the construction business.

How many additional people in the community will come see two mediocre teams play, because of a new stadium? The only team on their schedule this year that would be exciting to watch was Alabama, which game they lost 31-6.

Wouldn't it be simpler just to invest in offering a quality education at a reasonable cost? In other words dump the ball to the tailback and run it up the middle, to put it in terms that seem to appeal to administrators at CSU.

This sort of thinking is what is driving ridiculous cost increases for a college education. We have two industries in the US that have annual cost increases that are perpetually much higher than rate of inflation--healthcare and education (especially higher ed). Both are heavily subsidized by the government. Both have gushers of money pouring in and NO natural cost controls. The throttle is wide open.

Stupidest thing I have heard lately (except maybe for all of the failed funding methods that are being tried to get a new Vikings stadium in my home state of MN).

The article states, "Colorado State has a built-in financial handicap: It belongs to the Mountain West Conference. In 2012-2013, Mountain West distributed an average of $2.3 million in broadcast-rights revenue to each school..."

Hold on, where does this $2.3 million go? While it's true that broadcast-rights are the major source of money, it's not true that the $2.3 million are pure profits for the university or even its athletic department.

The university is obliged under Title IX to fund women's athletics, person for person, equally to men’s athletics. For every 100+ male football players who earn money for the college, there must be 100+ female athletes who lose money for the university. This fact is not to denigrate the efforts of female athletes, but it’s a financial fact.

Only men’s basketball and hockey are other money-earning sports at the college level. For CSU to make any kind of economic argument for a new football stadium, it needs to get out from under the burden of Title IX. It needs to separate men’s football, basketball and hockey from the common athletic budget and then fund all other sports equally. But what are the realistic chances of that ever happening?

As a CSU alumni and parent of a current student (out-of-state) I think this is a great idea. The stadium is just one of a number of improvements that CSU has made. Competion for out of state students makes CSU a better school overall.

Both my wife and I attended our undergraduate and graduate schools on the basis of academics and for the education, not the sports. For our granddaughter, we have dropped CSU from our list of potential schools thanks to the apparent lack of emphasis on education.

How about borrowing 1/2 that amount and direct it toward improving the school's academics and job placement? Also, maybe some $ could go toward encouraging the "regular" student to engage in an athletic and healthy lifestyle. Crazy, I know.

1. A recent article about dropping attendance at college games and thinking about a $2M to $10M expense to equip stadiums with wifi.2. Now, all these " bright elites" think building a bigger stadium will attract more students?

Meanwhile, the President of Colorado State earns about $500, 000 while the football coach $1.4M.( I suspect both are overpaid).

Topping all this off, our President wants to institute a University grading system in the hopes that students will better pick schools that will help them in the future.

Our entire University athletic system, especially in football, seems driven by something other than learning.

If just having gleaming new sports facilities ends college funding woes, everyone would build them. Oh, that's right, they are and now there is a bubble.

Simply end the fiction that NCAA football and basketball have anything to do with higher education and the problem is resolved. There are thousands of wealthy sports fanatics that would bid millions to own a team named Rams, Ole Miss, Aggies, Hurricanes, Wildcats, Badgers, Buckeyes, Ducks and so on.

These tycoons can buy out all the related facilities, keep the school affiliated name and pay the athlete serfs for their stay in the minor leagues of the NFL and NBA. This would also end all the shenanigans around poor athletes and agents trying to lure young men to their teams. Motivated young men could even work towards a degree.

Colleges could use the money to actually focus on education - well some might.

What's the mortgage? why not get one of the drillers to plaster his name on it and hand it over for a tax deduction? How many students and years to recoup by which point the school has to renovate a tired outdated joint or start again? Just when everyone in Texas was proud to be paying Mack Brown five mil a year to miss bowls. Imagine if in ten years on a fifty bond football loses its appeal. Even Ohio State which pays for the states highway administration and funds health care for the poor has to realize there's a time limit on everything. Hey this is how we get out of the treasury debt. We start selling athletes to the Iranians who want peace.

The stadium proposal is representative of the sickness that infects university administrations nationwide. It is the concept that adding more bells and whistles, palatial student union buildings and more administrators will attract more students who will pay higher tuition costs.

It is the cost of a four year education that is killing student enrollment. Costs have risen on average 7% a year since 1978, triple the CPI. Much of the tuition increase has been absorbed by students in the form of burdensome debt. Rather than face the real cause of declining enrollment, the horrendous cost of getting an education, CSU should be cutting tuition. To do that they should look at administrative bloat and useless frills.

A stadium that costs a quarter of a billion dollars is a useless frill.

I believe that the top 10 universities in US News and World Reports also have healthy endowments. The only SEC team in the top 20 of that list is Vanderbilt. $250 M invested in top notch faculty and high demand educational programs (engineering, science, health) would realize a much better return on investment than $250 M in a new football stadium.

Is this the future of how American public higher education will be financed - by attempting to lure students to pay higher tuition with opportunities to watch semi-literate pseudo-students smash their heads against one another in multi-million dollar coliseums?

This goes to my contention that big time college athletics need to be separated from the universities and operated as a business. The university could sponsor the team but the players and staff get paid and are employees of the team not this farce we have now of the players being "amateurs" and can't be paid.

What does this stadium or any other college stadium have to do with education? They play what 6 or 7 games a year there?

"Why does a car dealership build a brand-new showroom?" he said. "You bring a client in, you want to show excellence."??? A car dealership sells cars.. a university educates.. so build a new stadium?? The school's second-year football coach obviously does not understand what the primary purpose of a university is.

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MY YOUTUBE user Avsec Bostjan WAS HIJACKED (since March 07th, 2012, I was not allowed to log in for 6 months on what one was finally shot down = self elected terrorist ZIONIST US Government have used one under my name and with all copyrights of my 77 videos which I have created = next time when gangsters point you out copyrights issues, please show them middle finger or this very case if you like ) BY US GOV. WHILE PRIMARY E-MAIL & BLOGS WERE SHUT DOWN FOR THE SAKE OF CENSORSHIP REGARDING ABDUCTIONS/ MK-ULTRA/ FORCED BRAIN IMPLANTS/ HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION/ BLACKLISTING/ FORCEFUL UNEMPLOYMENT AND ASSASSINATIONS !! ALL AGAINST WHITES (under "NAZI" lie).

The vast majority of colleges and universities loose money on Football.One reason Finland, Singapore, Germany etc excel in education is that they do not have sports teams associated with the high schools or universities. If the NFL want a minor league, let it pay for one.

Comparing to Oregon is a bad one. Oregon plays in a "big time" sports conference with lots of exposure.

There are examples of football improving a school's profile. Back in the early 80s Georgia Southern re-instituted football and had great success at the Division 1-AA level and saw a lot of growth. It was great marketing for what became a regional university. Statesboro, GA at the time had a lot less to offer than does Fort Collins.

All of this seems crazy, but it worked for Auburn University in the 1980s. The engineering school was at risk of losing accreditation. There were all kinds of academic and program problems. The trustees met. Everyone held their breath. What did the trustees decide to do? Add on to the football stadium! Everyone was aghast. But it worked. They added on to the football stadium, recruited an unheard of high school athlete named Bo Jackson and the rest is history.

CSU would be well advised to build on its strength: providing a cost effective education for in-state students in combination with a few world-class programs such as veterinary and atmospheric sciences to attract non-residents. The value of having a CSU degree is in the actual learnings, not in the name prestige. The football program is supposed to be a slightly profitable joke.

They think they can build a program, fill the seats and attract out of state students. That's the formula successfully engineered by the University of Oregon. But the BIG difference is that U of O has a huge benefactor in Phil Knight of Nike. Without Knight, and his hundreds of millions, U of O would still be in the backwater of college football. Not an easy formula to replicate...especially when they're using public money.

I loved big name sports when I lived in Colorado. The best skiing days were when some Super Game was on. This was in Aspen where the skiers are from everywhere. The absolute best day skiing is New Years Day.

My son went there for two years before transferring. During Parents Day, I was shocked/amazed at the facilities they had there, and we were paying for it, either in tuition or taxes. Better than most hotels. Fitness Center second to none, etc., etc. Disgusting how administrations continue to waste money with no accountability. This boondogle is just one example.

Obviously they allow pot smoking in the President's Office. Brick and concrete facilities are on the way out. Online courses will kill them like it killed the music CD. A Harvard economist predicts one half of all private schools will be bankrupt in 5 to 10 years. This proposal is dumb, dumb, dumb.

Recent studies show the largest cost increase in college operations is the building and use of student amenities, apartment dorm rooms, exercise facilities, dining and rec rooms. My grandson just started at Virginia Tech and one of the first articles I saw on the school was it top rated food service facilities and world class menus. I think a good cafeteria with solid food is all that is need to nourish a brain working on differential equations, linear and vector algebra and the modern physics course he is currently enrolled in.

Most universities have an endowment fund that finances new buildings such as fitness centers. Your tax money helps subsidize the cost of tuition not the new gym. Of course the donations that the philanthropists so generously give to their ulma mater or favorite school to have a health center named after them are a tax deductible gift for them, if you would like to think of it in those terms.

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